


Calling B.S.

by lincyclopedia



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: (in the form of discussing lord byron's actual life), Gen, Growing Up, Implied/Referenced Incest, POV Third Person, POV Third Person Limited, Present Tense, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:01:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23588821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lincyclopedia/pseuds/lincyclopedia
Summary: A certain young Knight renames himself and comes to terms with his namesake. Note: this fic reveals Shitty's real name.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 58





	1. Before Samwell

**Author's Note:**

> One of my favorite things about being a liberal arts grad is the ability to pull stuff like this out of thin air. Four years ago, I took a study abroad course about the second-generation British Romantics, including Lord Byron. We went to London, Geneva, Venice, Florence, and Rome; we read a group biography called _Young Romantics_ by Daisy Hay; and we slogged through about two hundred pages of excerpts by Byron, the Shelleys, and Keats. The trip was both amazing and awful: we saw tons of breathtaking sights . . . and nobody talked to me, and I came back convinced I was unfit for human companionship. Anyway, as soon as I found out Shitty’s name, I knew I had to write this.

“You’re named after the greatest poet since Shakespeare,” Byron’s father tells him. Byron doesn’t see his father often, but sometimes his father comes and says good night to him after his nanny has put him to bed, and he likes to tell Byron about his namesake. His namesake who was brilliant and brave and handsome, who wrote epic poems and fought in an epic war. 

Byron’s ten when he finally manages to read “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.” He’s tried to make it through his parents’ leather-bound volume before, but he’s never managed to make it past the first few pages. The rhymes are delightful, but the poem as a whole is dense. He’s read poems in school—Shel Silverstein and the like—and they’re rarely more than a page long. “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” is on a completely different level. But something about having a double-digit age gives Byron the fortitude to make it through the whole book. 

And now he has places he wants to go. It’s not unusual for his parents to take him to France for a couple weeks in the summer, but this summer he wants to retrace his namesake’s footsteps: England, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Switzerland, Italy. His parents hem and haw for a while about it, so Byron decides he needs to go all in—he gets travel guides from the library and looks up information on the internet, and he even calls a travel agent and pretends to be his own mother (since his voice hasn’t dropped yet). He plans and researches and researches and plans until he has a three-week trip all mapped out, complete with hotels and flights. 

So his parents say yes, and off to Europe they fly. They start in Portugal and then head to Spain, and then they fly to Greece and see where Lord Byron died. Byron hadn’t realized that his namesake died of a fever—his father’s stories had always emphasized the Greek war for independence. So Greece is a bit of a letdown. Rome and Venice are cool, though—Lord Byron had this massive palazzo in the city of Venice and kept horses on an island called the Lido and studied Armenian with exiled Armenian monks on an island called San Lazaro, so Byron and his parents visit all the islands, ferrying from one to the other. 

After Venice, the Knights head north to Switzerland. Byron is mostly interested in the country because of Canto III of “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” but his mother insists they stop in Geneva at the Villa Diodati, which Lord Byron owned for a little while in 1816. It’s the place where Mary Shelley wrote _Frankenstein_ , Byron’s mother tells him. Byron says he doesn’t care. Years later, he’ll actually read the book, and he’ll realize Mary had a better head on her shoulders than any of the men she kept company with, but for now he really has no opinions about her or her work.

England is where things change. Byron’s father has given into his begging and managed to get the family a private tour of Harrow, the boarding school Lord Byron attended. Byron is excited to visit the fourth form room and see his own name carved into the wall in block letters, to run his fingers over the carving and know he’s touching the same wood as his namesake. It feels just as good as he thought it would. But later, in the churchyard, he wanders away from his parents for a minute and notices some words carved into a stone at the base of the church building: “In memory of ALLEGRA, daughter of LORD BYRON and CLAIRE CLAIRMONT. Born in Bath 13/1/1817. Died Bagnacavallo 19/4/1822. Buried nearby. Erected by the Byron Society.” 

“Dad, who was Allegra?” he calls. 

His parents stop walking through the churchyard and turn around. “Who?”

“This stone is for Allegra,” Byron explains. “It says she was the daughter of Lord Byron and Claire Clairmont. Who was Allegra? And who was Claire Clairmont? I thought Lord Byron’s wife’s name was Annabella.” 

His father sighs. “It was. Lord Byron . . . separated from Annabella in 1816. He then met Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley’s . . . half-sister, I believe? Lord Byron and Claire had a daughter named Allegra, and she died young. It’s a blot on Lord Byron’s reputation, to be sure, that he was . . . involved with so many women. But he was still the greatest poet since Shakespeare, and that’s the most important part.” 

Byron notices that his mother is giving his father a dirty look. Then he looks back at the cracked, mossy stone. It doesn’t seem right. It’s not even a gravestone; it’s a stone that’s part of the building. What does “buried nearby” mean? Why isn’t it right over Allegra’s grave? And—Byron does the math—if Allegra was born in 1817 and died in 1822, then she was five when she died. His cousin Eloise is five. It doesn’t seem right that a five-year-old would die. And to not even have a gravestone! Byron doesn’t like it. 

“Byron! Come along now,” calls his father. 

Byron wipes his eyes on the back of his hands—he hadn’t realized he was crying. His father notices and says, “Oh, for Christ’s sake, she died nearly 200 years ago, and she was a bastard anyway. The point of this tour was to see where Lord Byron went to school.” 

Byron’s accustomed to saying, “Yes, Father,” but he can’t make himself say it this time. Something about “she was a bastard anyway” doesn’t feel right.

When Byron gets back to the US, he Googles Allegra, but that doesn’t get him very far, so then he Googles Claire Clairmont. It only takes a few clicks and a bit of scrolling for him to wind up appalled. He’s spent his entire life looking up to Lord Byron, but the way he treated Claire? Taking Allegra away and refusing to let Claire visit her? Refusing to provide any money for Claire when it was his fault her reputation and prospects were ruined? Byron can’t abide by this. This isn’t heroic. This isn’t even right. For the first time in his life, he’s ashamed of his name. 

When he goes to school the next fall, he asks his friends and his teachers to call him B rather than Byron. Most of them do. That’s all well and good until his report card comes in the mail and his teachers’ comments refer to him as B. His father asks him why and B replies that it’s because Lord Byron was a jerk and he doesn’t want a jerk’s name. His father yells back that Lord Byron was a fine man and a fine writer and B is lucky to have his name, and B returns that if Lord Byron was so good then he should have done better by Claire Clairmont, and his father tells him that he’s ten years old and has no business judging adults, and it devolves from there. It’s the first screaming match B has with his father, but by no means the last. 

A few years later, B starts attending Andover. He’s been playing hockey since he was a kid, but Andover is the real deal, or at least as real as high school hockey can get. So it stands to reason that this is where he gets his first hockey nickname. He’s only vaguely been aware of the tradition of hockey nicknames prior to this, so he didn’t really have expectations for what his nickname would be until tryouts. But then the upperclassmen start giving nicknames to some of the more promising younger players, and it always seems to be based on the person’s last name, so B figures he’ll be Knightster or something. 

Unfortunately, the captain’s favorite subject is English and he knows his British Romantics. “Your name is Byron?” he asks B. 

“I go by B,” B replies. 

“That’s not an answer,” the captain points out. 

B crosses his arms. “I know.” 

“Your name is Byron, yes or no?” the captain asks. 

“Yes,” B grits out. 

“Cool. You’re Bysshe now. Welcome to the team.” 

“Bish?” someone asks. “Like fish? What does bish have to do with Byron?”

The captain rolls his eyes. “Bysshe. Like Percy Bysshe Shelley. Lord Byron’s best friend.” No one laughs. “Come on, it’s a joke.” 

Some sycophants titter nervously, but no one seems to find the nickname actually funny other than the captain. 

The nickname gradually grows on B. He hates Percy Shelley, partially as an extension of hating Byron and partially because of the research he’s done on Claire Clairmont, whom Shelley didn’t treat well either. But Bysshe is one syllable, which makes it easy to yell, and it starts with a B and it’s not Byron. He still tries to go by B in his classes, but on the ice he’s Bysshe, and it’s okay. 

Still, he’s thrilled when he gets the letter from Samwell. Samwell means a lot of things—a way to break from his father’s family, a place to stretch himself academically, and a new hockey team that will hopefully give him a new nickname. Most of all, he’s pretty sure Samwell means freedom.


	2. Samwell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> B arrives at Samwell, gets a new name, takes Intro to Women's and Gender Studies, and finds out about Lord Byron's daughter Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never been able to find anyone who knows both Lord Byron's work and Ada Lovelace's work. If you are that person, please leave a comment so we can scream together about the fact that they're related.

It’s B’s first practice at Samwell and he’s a little starstruck to find himself sharing the ice with Jack motherfucking Zimmermann. Maybe more than a little. But now nicknames are happening, so he has to pay attention. He wants something good this time. 

“Hey, Knight!” yells one of the older players. “What if we call you Knighty?”

B wrinkles his nose. “I don’t want to sound like a nightgown. How about Knightster?”

“Uh-uh, no picking your own nickname,” says another older player. “How’s Knightsy?”

“Maybe?” says B.

“Nah,” calls another one of the upperclassmen. “No ring to it. Hey, I saw him listed on the roster as B.S. Knight. What’s that about? Everyone else is listed by first and last.” 

B shrugs, knowing that he’ll only make things worse for himself if he makes this a Thing. “I don't really like my first name, so I go by my initials.” 

“What’s your first name?” someone asks, at the same time as the previous guy is saying, “So you’d rather go by B.S.? Like bullshit?”

“Hey, what if we called you Shitty?” someone calls, clearly joking. 

B feels like he’s just gotten an electric shock, in the best way. “Oh my God,” he says before anyone else can speak. “ _Please_.” 

Several people stare at him. “You _want_ us to call you Shitty?” someone asks. 

“It would make my father _so mad_ ,” he explains. 

“Ah, daddy issues, got it,” the same person says, nodding. 

Practice resumes, and Shitty has a new identity. 

Shitty mostly signed up for Intro to Women’s and Gender Studies to piss off his father, but the reading list looks kind of awesome, and the first day of class is surprisingly interesting. He gets called Byron when the professor takes attendance, so he asks to be called B—part of him wants to ask to be called Shitty, but the team’s only been calling him that for two weeks at this point and he’s not sure if it’ll stick. He makes a mental note to look into Samwell’s preferred name policy, though; he’s already sure that he definitely doesn’t want to be called Byron on the first day of the semester for the next four years. 

At the end of class, the guy in the desk next to him—one of only two other guys in the whole class—turns to him and says, “Your name’s Byron? That’s so cool!”

Shitty is very confused about why someone who thinks Lord Byron is cool would take Intro to Women’s and Gender Studies, and he says so. 

“Nah, bro, I know the guy was a dick, but he was Ada Lovelace’s father!”

Shitty has been so busy hating Lord Byron for what he did to Claire Clairmont and Allegra that he hadn’t realized Lord Byron had other kids, which forces him to ask, “Who was Ada Lovelace?”

“‘Who was Ada Lovelace?’ he says!” the guy practically shouts. “Are you sure you belong in a Women’s and Gender Studies class? She was the first computer programmer! I mean, she didn’t have a computer like we think of them now, but she wrote an algorithm that could be solved by a machine. First person in the history of history to do that. She’s practically the patron saint of programming!” He finally lowers his voice a bit. “I’m a computer science major, but I’m thinking of minoring in Women’s and Gender Studies. I’m only a sophomore, so I can definitely still fit it in.” 

“Cool,” says Shitty. “I’m a frog, so I haven’t declared anything yet. We’ll see where life takes me, you know?”

“Yeah,” says the guy. “Good luck with that!” 

Shitty looks up Ada Lovelace when he gets back to his dorm, and hot damn the woman was cool. He also looks up Lord Byron’s other children, and is completely grossed out by the fact that Lord Byron probably committed incest with his half-sister, Augusta. Shitty had thought his opinion of his namesake couldn’t sink any lower, but apparently it could, because it does when he sees that disgusting fact. 

By October, Shitty is pretty sure that he’s going to want to go by Shitty in most situations for the rest of his life, and certainly for the rest of the school year. He looks up Samwell’s preferred name policy and is glad to find that all he has to do is fill out a form from the Registrar’s webpage and change the way he’d like the school to refer to him. A few days after he fills it out, he gets an email from the Registrar’s office informing him that someone stole his password and tried to prank him by changing his preferred name to something profane, so he goes to the Registrar’s office in person and explains the situation. The woman in the office doesn’t want to let him change his preferred name to Shitty, but he asks her to show him where it’s written that doing so would be against the rules, and eventually she relents. 

As a sophomore, Shitty takes a class called Gender and Sexuality in the Romantic Era. He’s shocked when someone calls Lord Byron a “bicon” and even more shocked when someone else adds, “Yeah, the dude fucked anything that moved.” Shitty hadn’t known this, and it provokes a bit of a crisis—being queer in Lord Byron’s day couldn’t have been easy; should Shitty judge his namesake less harshly? While his mind is playing tug-of-war with the new information, however, one of his female classmates brings up the way Lord Byron treated Claire Clairmont, and Shitty feels like his feet are back under him. Regardless of whether Lord Byron liked men, he should still be held accountable for the way he treated the women in his life. 

Shitty’s senior year, he has a considerable amount of tub juice at a kegster (that’s every kegster, though) and decides he wants to corner Dex. The frog just oozes toxic masculinity and “brogrammer” vibes, and Shitty needs to tell him about Ada Lovelace. “Ever heard of Ada Lovelace?” he asks when he reaches Dex. 

“No. Should I have?” Dex asks, tone somewhere between wary and confrontational. 

“She was the first computer programmer, back in the 1800s,” Shitty tells him. 

Dex frowns. “There weren’t computers back in the 1800s.” 

“She wrote an algorithm that could be solved by a machine,” Shitty explains. “Listen, she was so cool. So she was Lord Byron’s daughter, right? Grew up with this legacy of poetry, even though Byron wasn’t around. And instead of poetry, she did math! She worked with a guy named Charles Babbage on this thing known as the analytical engine . . .” 

Dex’s eyes glaze over eventually, though whether that’s from boredom or from alcohol, Shitty isn’t sure. He’s been talking about Ada Lovelace for a while at this point, but he keeps finding more things to say and getting more passionate, to the point that tub juice is sloshing out of his solo cup and onto the Haus floor. Whatever. If there’s anything redeeming about his namesake, it’s the guy’s daughters, particularly this one.


End file.
